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This is the unabridged audio recording of M.R. James' excellent ghost story 'A Warning to the Curious'. The author's stories were written with the purpose of being read aloud in the long tradition of spooky Christmas Eve tales. This highly-praised version, narrated by David Collings, is sure to scare and delight in equal measure.Tags
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It became plain to me after a few minutes that this visitor of ours was in rather a state of fidgets or nerves, which communicated itself to me, and so I put away my writing and turned to at engaging him in talk.
After some remarks, which I forget, he became rather confidential. 'You'll think it very odd of me' (this was the sort of way he began), 'but the fact is I've had something of a shock.' Well, I recommended a drink of some cheering kind, and we had it. The waiter coming in made an interruption (and I thought our young man seemed very jumpy when the door opened), but after a while he got back to his woes again. There was nobody he knew in the place, and he did happen to know who we both were (it turned out there was some common show more acquaintance in town), and really he did want a word of advice, if we didn't mind. Of course we both said: 'By all means,' or 'Not at all,' and Long put away his cards. And we settled down to hear what his difficulty was.
The title of "A Warning to the Curious" could apply to many of M. R. James' stories, and it is quite a similar story to "Oh Whistle and I'll Come to You, My Lad", with the protagonist stirring up trouble for himself by digging up an artifact and then trying to put things right be returning it to its resting place, although Paxton is searching for the object he digs up, rather than coming across it accidentally. One thing I really like about both stories is how the older men the protagonists ask for advice are so willing to help a young man in trouble, however unlikely the tale he tells.
The Haunted Dolls' House was one of the stories by famous authors that were written for Queen Mary's Dolls House, bound into tiny books and placed in bookcases in the dolls' house library and M. R. James comments at the end of the story that he is worried that it is too similar to his earlier story "The Mezzotint" so it must have worried him, but I don't think it is similar enough to be a problem. Hills feature prominently in several of these stories (whether haunted by something that screams, a viewpoint from which to view the countryside, the burial place of an ancient treasure or the site of a giant chalk figure cut into the turf). show less
After some remarks, which I forget, he became rather confidential. 'You'll think it very odd of me' (this was the sort of way he began), 'but the fact is I've had something of a shock.' Well, I recommended a drink of some cheering kind, and we had it. The waiter coming in made an interruption (and I thought our young man seemed very jumpy when the door opened), but after a while he got back to his woes again. There was nobody he knew in the place, and he did happen to know who we both were (it turned out there was some common show more acquaintance in town), and really he did want a word of advice, if we didn't mind. Of course we both said: 'By all means,' or 'Not at all,' and Long put away his cards. And we settled down to hear what his difficulty was.
The title of "A Warning to the Curious" could apply to many of M. R. James' stories, and it is quite a similar story to "Oh Whistle and I'll Come to You, My Lad", with the protagonist stirring up trouble for himself by digging up an artifact and then trying to put things right be returning it to its resting place, although Paxton is searching for the object he digs up, rather than coming across it accidentally. One thing I really like about both stories is how the older men the protagonists ask for advice are so willing to help a young man in trouble, however unlikely the tale he tells.
The Haunted Dolls' House was one of the stories by famous authors that were written for Queen Mary's Dolls House, bound into tiny books and placed in bookcases in the dolls' house library and M. R. James comments at the end of the story that he is worried that it is too similar to his earlier story "The Mezzotint" so it must have worried him, but I don't think it is similar enough to be a problem. Hills feature prominently in several of these stories (whether haunted by something that screams, a viewpoint from which to view the countryside, the burial place of an ancient treasure or the site of a giant chalk figure cut into the turf). show less
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Ghost Stories That Thrill Us
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- Canonical title
- A Warning to the Curious and Other Ghost Stories
- Original language
- English
- Canonical DDC/MDS
- 823.08733
- Disambiguation notice
- There seem to be at least two books with the same title mixed here, perhaps inextricably.
One is the original 1925 book (James's fourth collection) and reprints thereof. It contains 6 stories: The haunted doll's house... (show all).--The uncommon prayer-book.--A neighbor's landmark.--A view from a hill.--A warning to the curious.--An evening's entertainment.
The other is a recent selection of James's stories with an introduction by Ruth Rendell. It contains 13 stories:
Canon Alberic's scrap-book --
The Tractate Middoth --
The mezzotint --
The treasure of Abbot Thomas --
The stalls of Barchester Cathedral --
The ash-tree --
A warning to the curious --
Casting the runes --
Number 13 --
The uncommon prayer book --
Count Magnus --
"Oh, whistle, and I'll come to you, my lad" --
Mr Humphreys and his inheritance.
Books with the Ruth Rendell collection ISBNs have been seperated from this work
It appears from some descriptions that the Phoenix Short Stories collection actually contains 16 stories.
(Books with the Phoenix collection ISBN have been seperated.)
Do not combine with the 7 story collection by IndoEuropeanPublishing.
This is the collection of 7 stories by IndoEuropeanPublishing (2012). It should not be combined with the 1925 collection or any other collections with the same name.
Original collection of 6 short stories; do not combine with later editions containing add'l stories
Classifications
- Genres
- Fiction and Literature, Horror, General Fiction
- DDC/MDS
- 823.08733 — Literature & rhetoric English & Old English literatures English fiction By type Genre fiction Adventure fiction Horror and ghost fiction Ghost fiction
- LCC
- PR6019 .A565 .W3 — Language and Literature English English Literature 1900-1960
- BISAC
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- Czech, English
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- Paper, Audiobook, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 9
- ASINs
- 4
